OPERATIONAL MODEL

Sullivan Street Partners is extremely active in helping businesses in its portfolio improve operationally and works alongside management teams continuously to effect not just transformational change projects but also smaller incremental improvements. To date, Sullivan Street Partners has within its portfolio established new standalone central functions, developed export opportunities, launched business units, refocused sales propositions, increased productivity and restructured logistics processes, all delivering significant improvements. If necessary we will take and have taken interim executive roles – we will do whatever it takes.

The leadership in each Sullivan Street business knows they can call on the team when facing a new challenge, when a decision is not clear or even just to share a problem and gain a second point of view. Larger projects with mixed teams from Sullivan Street, management and external experts are used to accelerate change and have driven major improvements.

Our operational model, while incorporating enormous experience, expertise and detail, is simple in its basic approach. We commit time and practical support to the company, work with management to analyse and manage performance in detail; we are always interested and available and we lead by example and share the workload wherever we can add value; and throughout our ownership we stay intimate with the businesses to ensure we can be there when needed, anticipate those needs, and just as crucially cause no damage to the business through having only enough knowledge to be dangerous.

Since inception Sullivan Street has incorporated the operational model into all that we do, we focus on very few businesses at one time, consider operations early in any investment and commit to companies assuming we will hold them for a very long time. Most of all, we are naturally minded to get involved and want to help businesses to work well.